About 50 activists, parents, children and others gathered outside the Phoenix Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Monday to protest the detention of their loved ones in immigration detention facilities.

The crowd chanted messages such as "Hey, ho, let my daddy go" and marched around the office carrying posters with images of family members who have been detained or deported. Children released star-shaped helium balloons affixed with demands in support of those currently detained.

"No more deportations. Let the fathers go. No more family separation. Let Jose Juan go," said the note on the back of 8-year-old Angel Alvarez Sanchez's shiny gold balloon.

His father, an undocumented immigrant, has been held in detention in Eloy for two weeks after failing to appear at court proceedings for a DUI charge, according to Angel's mother, 42-year-old Maria Candelaria Sanchez Avecilla.

"Myself and my children depend on him," Avecilla said. She added that her husband supported the family as a construction worker.

The gathering was organized by the Puente Movement and the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, two immigrants' rights organizations in Phoenix.

"They want ICE to know that they weren't able to spend Father's Day with their family members because of these (immigration) policies," Puente Movement organizer Natalie Cruz said.

President Barack Obama announced in May that he would delay a review of deportation policies until the end of the summer, a move that frustrated immigrants' rights activists who hoped for a change in the policy. The U.S. Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill last year, but the House of Representatives has yet to consider the bill or any other comprehensive immigration legislation.

"These family members wanted to tell President Obama that their family members are at risk as this delay is going on," Cruz said. "Kids are suffering. Kids who are teenagers are having to step up and play that role of being a mom or a dad."

Julisa Avila is a 16-year-old who marched with her three siblings in support of their mother, Norma Bernal, who is being held in a Florence detention center. She was apprehended trying to cross back into the U.S. after being deported in January.

"She tried to come back April 14, back for my brother's birthday," Avila said.

Avila and her three siblings are U.S. citizens and are living with family in the Valley until they receive word about what will happen to their mother, who is to be deported at the end of the month.